Horizon Zero Dawn™ Complete Edition

Gameplay wise HZD is a mostly mix of machanics known from series such as Assasin's Creed, Far Cry and Tomb Raider (reboot and later). If you like these games, you should like HZD too. What stands out is the story and the world. It starts out as a seemingly simple enough search for the mysterious mother of a little girl that was outcast by a tribe in a postapocalyptic world. To get most out of the story be prepared to read a lot of notes and listen to audio logs spread out all over the huge world. The athmosphere, the voice acting and sound design are very well done. Combat is a major part of the game, and the robot enemies are a lot of fun to fight. If just shot at naively they are bullet sponges. However they all have weak components that can be exploited and combined with environmental effects to bring them down more efficiently. Some of their weapons can even be shot off, picked up and used against them. The leveling system scales linearly, which is nice because even at level 50 a pack of enemies from the early areas can be threat if approached without a plan. Technically it's a great console port that does everything right for PC players. Support for multiple resolutions, no FPS limit, keyboard settings - it's all there and done well. There's a few points that did limit my enjoyment a bit: The story is linear without any choices ór branches. Collectibles are pretty boring and realistically many can only be found with the use of maps, and do not offer much of a reward. While you can see very far, details are often covered in fog to carter the capabilities of the 2013 Playstation 4. And there is a gender bias towards eveil men. But these are minor issues. All things considered HZD is a nice action and exploration game with a great story.

This has to be one of the best action games. The combat flow does not get old after 100+ hours. They have really nailed the combat. Also, only 50 hours in I have started to discover that some tools at my disposal from very early on are actually worth using and add to the experience. Also, If you find hunting grounds challenges too hard when you encounter them, play some more and then return with battle-tested skills. It will be pretty easy to get all blazing suns, I promise you. If you have been following the development stories about this game, you know it involved some technical innovations and is a very well optimized game originally meant to release for PS4. I have to praise the side quests for the effort, because they all felt meaningful in some way. There are only a handful of games with that quality, like Witcher III and some of the Deus Ex installments. The main story of course takes the crown, I feel it is not as unexpected as they wanted it to be, but feels very fitting to the world. On a slight downside, the heroine’s journey somehow feels optimized as well. I really wanted to enjoy it on a deeper level. I wanted to profoundly care about the world and the people. However, it still felt that there is some disconnect between Aloy who is talking and Aloy who is performing stunts (maybe the combat is too good for its own sake). Other than that, can’t wait for the sequel and I hope it releases on PC and GOG as well.

I really like this game, the visuals are so good and I love the story. It's must!

This isn't a proper review: I've only played the game about 10 hours. Too long for a refund, too short for a review. So far, the game seems to run quite well, it hasn't had a single crash or even bug on me, and it looks and sounds great. I'm on a Ryzen 5 5600X, 16G memory and an RTX 2080. Running at 4K, I can set basically everything on High and use DLSS Quality mode for a pretty solid 60FPS. Content-wise it's a more mixed bag. I think Aloy as a main character is pretty okay: It's cool that we're getting a female lead who isn't overly sexualized but instead a competent human being. There is still a whiff of "the chosen one" type character building here, this time through some tech Aloy finds at the beginning of the game. The problem with that is, this is never really adressed between the characters of the game, so eventually it's functionally like being just another chosen one. What isn't so hot is the game hasn't really pulled me in to its world or plot. I get that 10 hours isn't that long to play in the general RPG scale, but honestly, 10 hours SHOULD be enough to build something. But within our 10 hours there's not really any characters around to care for, nor anything I'd be super excited to explore. The one real plot twist in the opening was so easy to anticipate and so worn out I actually blew a raspberry at my screen when it happened, thinking "Really? Really?" So, for now, I'm giving the game 3 stars out of five for excellent presentation and some intriguing elements, but for lacking any real pull into the world or plot.

I've got this game a long time ago, but I could never play since then. Whenever I want to start it, the game always crashes immediately. The game developer's support doesn't even care to answer to my message. The GOG only gives useless and general "solutions", like "restart PC" - but it doesnt't help. After reading other reviews I think it's better if it doesn't even start.